Qualcomm has confirmed its processors have the same security vulnerabilities disclosed this week in Intel, Arm and AMD CPU cores this week.

The California tech giant picked the favored Friday US West Coast afternoon "news dump" slot to admit at least some of its billions of Arm-compatible Snapdragon system-on-chips and newly released Centriq server-grade processors are subject to the Meltdown and/or Spectre data-theft bugs.

[...] Qualcomm declined to comment further on precisely which of the three CVE-listed vulnerabilities its chips were subject to, or give any details on which of its CPU models may be vulnerable. The paper describing the Spectre data-snooping attacks mentions that Qualcomm's CPUs are affected, while the Meltdown paper doesn't conclude either way.

[...] Apple, which too bases its iOS A-series processors on Arm's instruction set, said earlier this week that its mobile CPUs were vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown – patches are available or incoming for iOS. The iGiant's Intel-based Macs also need the latest macOS, version 10.13.2 or greater, to kill off Meltdown attacks.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has had some harsh words for Intel in the course of a discussion about patches for two bugs that were found to affect most of the company's processors. [...] Torvalds was clearly unimpressed by Intel's bid to play down the crisis through its media statements, saying: "I think somebody inside of Intel needs to really take a long hard look at their CPUs, and actually admit that they have issues instead of writing PR blurbs that say that everything works as designed."

The Finn, who is known for never beating about the bush where technical issues are concerned, questioned what Intel was actually trying to say. "Or is Intel basically saying 'we are committed to selling you shit forever and ever, and never fixing anything'?" he asked. "Because if that's the case, maybe we should start looking towards the ARM64 people more."

Intel says it has developed and is issuing updates for all types of Intel-based machines that will "render those systems immune from both exploits (referred to as 'Spectre' and 'Meltdown') reported by Google Project Zero. "Intel has already issued updates for the majority of processor products introduced within the past five years," says an Intel spokesperson. "By the end of next week, Intel expects to have issued updates for more than 90 percent of processor products introduced within the past five years."

Intel's reference to "immune" is an interesting twist in this saga. The New York Times reported yesterday that Spectre fixes will be a lot more complicated as they require a redesign of the processor and hardware changes, and that we could be living with the threat of a Spectre attack for years to come. Intel's wording appears to suggest that this isn't the case for its own processors and security fixes.

Just days after The Register revealed a serious security hole in its CPU designs, Intel is the target of three different class-action lawsuits in America.

Complaints filed in US district courts in San Francisco, CA [PDF], Eugene, OR [PDF], and Indianapolis, IN [PDF] accuse the chip kingpin of, among other things, deceptive practices, breach of implied warranty, negligence, unfair competition, and unjust enrichment.

The RISC-V Foundation would like to remind you that RISC-V is not affected.

Related Stories

tl;dr: there is presently an embargoed security bug impacting apparently all contemporary CPU architectures that implement virtual memory, requiring hardware changes to fully resolve. Urgent development of a software mitigation is being done in the open and recently landed in the Linux kernel, and a similar mitigation began appearing in NT kernels in November. In the worst case the software fix causes huge slowdowns in typical workloads. There are hints the attack impacts common virtualization environments including Amazon EC2 and Google Compute Engine, and additional hints the exact attack may involve a new variant of Rowhammer.

Turns out 2018 might be more interesting than first thought. So grab some popcorn and keep those systems patched!

This still-developing story is full of twists and turns. It seems that Intel chips are definitely implicated (AFAICT anything post Pentium Pro). There have been various reports, and denials, that AMD and ARM are also affected. There are actually two vulnerabilities being addressed. Reports are that a local user can access arbitrary kernel memory and that, separately, a process in a VM can access contents of other virtual machines on a host system. These discoveries were embargoed for release until January 9th, but were pre-empted when The Registerfirst leaked news of the issues.

At this time, manufacturers are scrambling to make statements on their products' susceptibility. Expect a slew of releases of urgent security fixes for a variety of OSs, as well as mandatory reboots of VMs on cloud services such as Azure and AWS. Implications are that there is going to be a performance hit on most systems, which may have cascading follow-on effects for performance-dependent activities like DB servers.

Hoping the Meltdown and Spectre security problems might mean Intel would be buying you a shiny new computer after a chip recall? Sorry, ain't gonna happen.

Intel famously paid hundreds of millions of dollars to recall its Pentium processors after the 1994 discovery of the "FDIV bug" that revealed rare but real calculation errors. Meltdown and Spectre are proving similarly damaging to Intel's brand, sending the company's stock down more than 5 percent.

[...] But Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said the new problems are much more easily fixed -- and indeed are already well on their way to being fixed, at least in the case of Intel-powered PCs and servers. Intel said Thursday that 90 percent of computers released in the last 5 years will have fixes available by the end of next week.
"This is very very different from FDIV," Krzanich said, criticizing media coverage of Meltdown and Spectre as overblown. "This is not an issue that is not fixable... we're seeing now the first iterations of patches."

Intel chips back 98% of data center operations, according to industry consultancy IDC. [...] Microsoft said on Tuesday the patches necessary to secure the threats could have a significant performance impact on servers.

[...] For Gleb Budman's company, San Mateo-based online storage firm Backblaze, building with ARM chips would not be difficult. "If ARM provides enough computing power at lower cost or lower power than x86, it would be a strong incentive for us to switch," said Budman. "If the fix for x86 results in a dramatically decreased level of performance, that might increasingly push in favor of switching to ARM."

Infinitely Virtual, a Los Angeles-based cloud computing vendor, is counting on Intel to replace equipment or offer a rebate to make up for the loss in computing power, Chief Executive Adam Stern said in an interview. "If Intel doesn't step up and do something to make this right then we're going to have to punish them in the marketplace by not purchasing their products," said Stern, whose company relies exclusively on Intel processors.

[...] Both Qualcomm and Cavium are developing ARM chips aimed at data centers. Cavium said it aimed to rival the performance of Intel chips for applications like databases and the content-delivery networks that help speed things like how fast online videos load.

This year's crop of CES laptops -- which we'll define broadly to include Windows-based two-in-one hybrids and slates -- even show signs of a sudden evolutionary leap. The long-predicted PC-phone convergence is happening, but rather than phones becoming more like computers, computers are becoming more like phones.

The most obvious way this is happening is the new breed of laptops that ditch the traditional Intel (and sometimes AMD) processors for new Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm. So far, we've seen three of these Snapdragon systems announced: the HP Envy x2, the Asus NoveGo and the Lenovo Miix 630.

Laptops with lower-end processors have been tried before, with limited success. Why is now potentially the right time? Because these systems aren't being pitched as bargain basement throwaways -- and in fact, they'll cost $600 and up, the same as many mainstream laptops in the US. Instead, they promise some very high-end features, including always-on LTE connectivity (like a phone) and 20-plus hours of battery life with weeks of standby time, which also sounds more like a phone than a PC. The tradeoff is that these Snapdragon laptops run Windows 10 S, a limited version of Windows 10, which only allows apps from the official Microsoft app store. That's also similar to the walled garden of mobile OS apps many phones embrace.

[...] There's another take on phone-laptop convergence happening here at CES. Razer, the PC and accessory maker, always brings one or two inventive prototypes to CES, such as last year's triple-screen Project Valerie laptop. The concept piece for CES 2018 is Project Linda, a 13-inch laptop shell, with a large cutout where the touchpad would normally be. You drop a Razer Phone in that slot, press a button, and the two pieces connect, with the laptop body acting as a high-end dock for the phone. The phone acts as a touchpad and also a second screen, and it works with the growing number of Android apps that have been specially formatted for larger laptop screens or computer monitors.

Apple plans to put custom processors inside at least three more Macs by the end of the year, according to Bloomberg. There are no details on what the chips will be used for, but the report says they'll appear in updated laptops and a new desktop.

Though Apple has been making custom chips for its phones, tablets, and wearables for years now, the company is only just starting to bring its house-made chips to the Mac. That started in a small way in 2016 with the high-end MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, which included a chip that was used to run the Touch Bar and Touch ID. Then last month, Apple included a custom chip inside the iMac Pro that handled, among other things, audio, camera processing, and encryption.

The Bloomberg article includes a detailed history of Apple's chip designs.

Spectre is Great News for Computer ManufacturersSpectre is Great News for Computer Manufacturers(Score: 4, Insightful) by Apparition on Sunday January 07 2018, @11:25PM
(27 children)

In the short term, Meltdown and Spectre are PR disasters for Intel, AMD, ARM, Qualcomm, etc. However, in the long term, Spectre is a holiday gift for them all. The only real way to fix Spectre is via new hardware, which will see release in 2019 or 2020. That means new desktop computers for governments and businesses, and new notebook computers, smartphones, and tablets for everyone! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year, Intel, AMD, ARM, Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, Dell, Lenovo, etc.

Re:Spectre is Great News for Computer ManufacturerRe:Spectre is Great News for Computer Manufacturer(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @11:34PM
(6 children)

This is just getting started. Some bright spark last year decided to start fuzzing CPU instructions. This is something the chip manufactures should have been doing. They better get on it ASAFP. Security and tech through obscurity does not work. When everyone learns this lesson yet again. We all get to pay for it. They are going to find more and more just like this for a long time.

This means things like pretty much all new cars have it. Your routers have it. Your internet modems have it. That oh so clever internet connected thermostat will have it. So on and so on. This is going to be *ugly*.

Re:Spectre is Great News for Computer ManufacturerRe:Spectre is Great News for Computer Manufacturer(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @12:28AM
(1 child)

The Kind Rapist. A legend or reality? The answer to that is, as you may have guessed, unconfirmed. You decide.

Rumor has it that there exists a rapist who is unbelievably kind to those he rapes. There are various stories that tell of his kindness. One story states that, after raping and murdering a 9 year old female child, he magnanimously threw a half-eaten lolly pop on the corpse. Another story states that he only beat and raped a woman who casually strolled past him a billion times for her heinous transgressions. Yet another story states that he always rapes with a gentle smile on his face. All of these stories have one obvious commonality, which is that they portray this individual as gentle and merciful, perhaps even as a saint.

The story of The Kind Rapist is sure to live on for many generations. But is it just a story?

The notion that "security by obscurity doesn't work" doesn't mean what you think it means.

It means that if you try to keep your mechanisms secret, you'll probably be compromised. This is because your particular, individual ideas are probably not that smart; it's much better to use mechanisms that have been vetted by very many intelligent people over a lengthy period of time, and which have already been proven under real-world attacks.

The mechanisms of a lock, though public knowledge, are buried obscurely in a metal body.

Your cryptographic key is a number that is so obscure, it's nearly impossible to guess.

I can tolerate 1366x768 resolution (for the moment), but 2 GB RAM needs to be eliminated as an option. The only good thing is that there are not any fewer full-sized USB ports to make way for the added USB Type-C ports. That's the way it should be.

Call it a delayed holiday gift for the computer manufacturers. The things they are showing off at CES right now probably have the compromised chips in them, and there's a good chance most people won't notice slowdowns enough to even want to avoid the bug and upgrade in 2 years. In short, no change!

AMD is still a winner in this situation because Spectre has no huge slowdowns associated with it and can be fixed with a firmware update AFAIK:

AMD shares are up 10.4 percent in the two days through Thursday following the report, while Intel's stock declined 5.2 percent in the period, wiping out $11.3 billion of shareholder value.

[...] On the flip side, AMD said any performance hits will be "negligible" after Spectre-related security software updates and there is "near zero risk of exploitation." The company also confirmed it is not affected by Meltdown due to processor "architecture differences." Researchers and Apple said Spectre is more difficult to exploit.

Multiple Wall Street analysts predicted AMD will take advantage of the Intel's security issues. AMD could use it as "a marketing edge given differing architectures and no vulnerability yet," Mizuho Securities analyst Vijay Rakesh wrote in a note to clients Wednesday.

If the hit seen on "synthetic benchmarks" translates to a similar/noticeable hit on I/O-heavy datacenter and HPC workloads, AMD has found its way in to actually push Threadripper and Epyc to customers who might not have given them the chance before. They are probably going to try to double the core count of Epyc in the next year or two. Zen was a good punch thrown at Intel, but Meltdown might lead to the knockout.

Also, none of the mitigations recommended so far completely protect againstSpectre. I would argue, in fact, that the mitigations only amount to asmall roadbump for attackers and will probably be defeated now that theattack vector is known.

Nothing short of new hardware (not yet produced) will really make a dent inSpectre. That could be 6 months to a year away, depending on how big afire is lit under the CPU vendors.

[...]

In otherwords, all of our options are bad. Spectre will not be mitigatedin any real sense on any existing CPU. Until new CPUs start appearing downthe line, 6 months or later from now, we are kind of all screwed. All ofthese mitigation's will probably be worked around by attackers in fairlyshort order.

If you can stand the performance loss associated with in-order processors, then not only can you save a huge amount of real estate per core, but you also get chips with consistently reproducible behavior and well defined, even if buggy, logic.

This might be an opportunity for some new upstart chip manufacturers to create an ecosystem based around openly documented in-order processors, with chipsets intercompatible between manufacturers as was the case through the clone years of the late 80s to the late 90s for PCs, or much of the 70s/early 80s for kit computers utilizing common busses. If this were to happen it would still cost us more than an equivalent AMD or Intel system, but given the tech advanced today, even something built on much older process technologies could be optimized for both reduced power usage compared to previous designs, as well as better performance per cycle. Avoiding the patent minefield would take some work, but if we crowdsourced that among techies and tech savvy legal nerds, we should be able to map out acceptable/unacceptable technology to a sufficient degree that we could have systems with plug and play support for RISC-V, J-Core, OpenSparc, OpenRisc, and other processors all running off the same motherboards, utilizing a management process similiar to the AMD/ARM/Intel management processors, only with the security key settable by the end user, possibly even using NVRAM of some form to make it effectively infinitely rewritable and simple to clear (which would lose a third party access to your encrypted data without a copy of the key) while allowing you to easily secure your hardware, clear it if the key becomes compromised or if you want to securely wipe it and offer it for a third party's use.

Re:Spectre is Great News for Computer Manufacturer(Score: 3, Informative) by arslan on Monday January 08 2018, @05:22AM

Just to add more color to this, according to AMD, their chips are not susceptible to Meltdown and is only susceptible to 1 of the 2 variant of Spectre exploits. And as you said, they also claim that the fix to that causes negligible performance impact. I would think they'd be in a lot of trouble if they are publishing this information with the intention to misled given they're publicly listed, so I'd take their official statement over a "blogger" anytime until proven otherwise:

Re:Spectre is Great News for Computer ManufacturerRe:Spectre is Great News for Computer Manufacturer(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Monday January 08 2018, @12:03AM
(7 children)

What I want to know is: are other CPU architectures vulnerable to something like this? x86-64 (and i586 before it, as this goes back to the PPro days) and ARM are vastly different architectures. But I wonder if SPARC or the old DEC Alpha were vulnerable to this kind of thing, or if they were simply better designed for memory security because they came from the "big iron" market where multi-process multi-user systems were the norm, unlike Intel which came from single-user DOS machines and ARM which came from the Acorn microcomputer company and was designed for embedded systems.

Re:Spectre is Great News for Computer Manufacturer(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:52AM

Pretty much any CPU that does speculative execution it is possible for this to happen. Basically if they are trying to retire more than 1 instruction per cycle. So yes if they do that they are candidates for these types of attacks. The older SPARC and Dec Alpha probably not. Even the old intel 486 does not have this issue as it has an in-order execution pipeline. Speculative execution really showed up after about 1995.

Re:Spectre is Great News for Computer Manufacturer(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 09 2018, @12:39AM

Ok, then it sounds like it's time to dust off the SPARC architecture and bring it back. I always liked those SPARCstations anyway, plus the keyboards were pretty nice, a lot better than the garbage we have now.

Re:Spectre is Great News for Computer ManufacturerRe:Spectre is Great News for Computer Manufacturer(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday January 08 2018, @12:49AM
(5 children)

However, in the long term, Spectre is a holiday gift for them all. The only real way to fix Spectre is via new hardware,

Not sure this broken window exercise is going to be all that good for anyone in either the long or the short run.

If they have to radically revamp processors, are they not just as likely to induce more errors in the process? Will we all end up spending a lot of money preventing a theoretical risk that we could ameliorate less expensively by simply turning off some of the features in these CPUs?

(Especially in the case of battery powered machines, predictive execution is a huge waste of energy, - speculatively processing along each of several branches in the hopes of having a result ready before the desired branch is actually selected, means you substituted battery energy for a slight time saving).

True, new designs, built from the ground up with security in mind might be somewhat improved (security wise) from the current designs. But with both government and industry looking for and demanding backdoors and built in exploits, we are just as likely to end up with more insecurities than fewer.

These devices are the most complex thing mankind has ever built. To expect anything beyond a mere patching here and there is like expecting to rebuild New York City from the ground up to in the hopes of avoiding the pitfalls of cities. Not going to happen.

Re:Spectre is Great News for Computer ManufacturerRe:Spectre is Great News for Computer Manufacturer(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday January 08 2018, @01:26AM
(1 child)

Someone can probably come up with a better example, like the Large Hadron Collider. But CPUs are really at the bleeding edge of manufacturing. It's nanotechnology, and subject to quantum effects. And yet we are stuck having them crippled one way or another with security bugs (possibly forgivable) or untrustworthy components (much worse).

To expect anything beyond a mere patching here and there is like expecting to rebuild New York City from the ground up to in the hopes of avoiding the pitfalls of cities. Not going to happen.

The patching seems to work in both cases. But you have to accept a possible slowdown in some scenarios if you patch for Meltdown.

Are you trying to say that Intel will not remove or correct the features in upcoming generations of hardware? Such as Cannonlake, which may have had its release delayed [macrumors.com] to the end of 2018? That rumor-based story came after Meltdown was known to researchers and doesn't give a solid reason for the delay. Maybe the difficulty is due to redesigning the silicon to avert carrying Meltdown into a new generation rather than the usual lithography yield issues.

If the patches addressing Spectre don't cause any perceptible slowdown, then maybe we will see Intel, AMD, ARM, etc. live with that bug lurking in new hardware for the next 2-3 years.

this broken window exercise[...]new designs, built from the ground up with security in mind

RISC-V

There was an Ask The Green Site story [slashdot.org] the other day on the topic of an Open Hardware core in an effort to leave behind the proprietary vendors who won't even fuzz[1] their damned microcode.

RISC-V was mentioned and seemed as good an answer as anything else suggested.

Bruce Perens had the idea that, with a 100 percent flashable device, these sorts of problems could be reverted without buying any new hardware....and noted that devices have come a long way since the slow power-hungry things we think of in this context (FPGAs).

[1] Mentioned by AC#619327 above.I'm shocked that I haven't seen this mentioned in every single story about these vulnerabilities.

Re:Spectre is Great News for Computer ManufacturerRe:Spectre is Great News for Computer Manufacturer(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:48AM
(2 children)

Not sure this broken window exercise is going to be all that good for anyone in either the long or the short runIt is indeed the 'broken window fallacy' However, someone has already tossed a brick through the window.

Remember in the story the glazier benefited from the broken window. I would say his anecdote is true in this case (INTC, QCOM, BCOM, APPL, etc being the glaziers). The rest of the economy however will suffer because of it, the actual lesson of the broken window fallacy.

Remember the fallacy is people talking about stimulating the economy through the use of destruction. In this case however the destruction is a done deal.

Re:Spectre is Great News for Computer Manufacturer(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @01:48AM

The version I heard the glaziers would benefit and some boy wanted to break the window. The effect is the same. Society as a whole is worse off while a small group benefit.

The users not so much. But it is not like we are going to collectively stop using computers. We will want our computers fixed. The ones who make computers will be better off as we need their goods. We as users will be worse off because we are replacing something that used to work just fine.

But at this point like I said it is a moot point. Someone has already chucked a brick through the window. So the supposition in the broken window fallacy is already in effect. The fallacy is thinking it is good for everyone not just a select few.

Governments play this game all the time (usually with taxes and deductions). They choose winners and losers in our markets. Usually with the mistaken idea they can make some select few better.

Y2K, F00F, and FDIV were trivial next to Spectre and Meltdown. To think that while we were sweating over Y2K, this bug was quietly lurking. Went unnoticed for over 20 years, is in the hardware, and affects many different architectures-- is there any major architecture that isn't affected? Have to go all the way back to the Pentium to find an Intel CPU that isn't affected, and that far back, some have the FDIV and/or F00F bugs.

How could this have not been noticed for 20 years? That part has me speculating that maybe, just maybe, it was a conspiracy! And maybe the 3 letter agencies wouldn't have allowed this to be publicized until they had another backdoor in place, like, oh... a Management Engine?

Was already stated...(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @11:12PM

SPARC, Power, and a few other architectures were definitely not affected due to different handling of cache for kernel/userspace.

Furthermore unless I have heard wrong, it DOESN'T affect IN-ORDER variants of x86/x86_64 processors either, meaning that Intel Atom, via C3 and maybe C7, and some later chips should all have avoided the SPECTRE exploits as well.

The biggest thing spectre proves is: Foreign code should NEVER be run on local hardware, as has been commonly known since the 80s or 90s at latest, but ignored for convenience and intellectual property protection purposes.